For weeks Hillary Clinton and her staff have done everything possible to lawyer themselves away from newly damaging details surrounding the FBI's criminal investigation into her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State.
One person Team Clinton has repeatedly tried to pin her scandal on is former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and according to newly released emails, he's having none of it.
Colin Powell attempted to persuade Hillary Clinton and her aides to not use him as a scapegoat for the controversy surrounding her private email server, according to leaked emails hacked from the former secretary of state’s Gmail account.
In the emails, which were obtained by The Intercept, Powell wrote to at least one confidant about his repeated warning to Clinton not to blame him for the scandal.
“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” he wrote. He also had tried to settle the matter in a meeting with Clinton aide Cheryl Mills in August.
In a separate email, Powell said he “warned her staff three times over the past two years not to try to connect it to me. I am not sure HRC even knew or understood what was going on in the basement.”
The Clinton campaign’s attempt to try to say Powell had encouraged the use of a private server left him deeply troubled.
“They are going to dick up the legitimate and necessary use of emails with friggin (sic) record rules. I saw email more like a telephone than a cable machine,” Powell wrote to business partner Jeffrey Leeds. “As long as the stuff is unclassified. I had a secure State.gov machine. Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”
Clinton has argued Powell did the "same thing" as she did, even arguing he counseled her, in regards to email during his time in office. This of course is completely false.
1) Powell didn't have a private email server set up in the basement of his home as Clinton did, he simply had a private email address
2) Powell didn't send or receive classified information on his private email account, Clinton transmitted thousands of pieces of classified information
3) Powell had a State.gov email address to conduct government business, Clinton rejected a State.gov address and did all of her government businesses on her private server and email addresses
Despite her excuses and efforts to escape responsibility for and the reality of her actions, Clinton's email scandal is one of her own making.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member